


A Chance Encounter at the Leaky

by ladyroxanne21



Series: Chance Encounter [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Someone tries to slip Harry Veritaserum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:07:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22358446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyroxanne21/pseuds/ladyroxanne21
Summary: It's Sunday and Harry doesn't want to be home alone, but all his friends are busy, so he goes to the Leaky Cauldron to have a few drinks only for Malfoy to show up and steal one.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Series: Chance Encounter [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1614232
Comments: 5
Kudos: 153





	A Chance Encounter at the Leaky

Harry gave a polite smile to the man that insisted on giving him a pint of ale.

“I'm so honored to meet you, Mr. Potter!” The man gushed, working himself into quite a frenzy before Harry was able to sufficiently thank him and send him on his way. When the man was gone – apparently to the loo to compose himself from such an overwhelming meeting – Harry frowned and cast a discrete spell on the ale to see if it contained any undesirable additions.

The ale flashed white gold for a split second, and Harry pinched his chin and squinted his eyes in thought as he tried to remember which potion was indicated by white gold...

“Been here long, Potter?” Draco asked as he blatantly stole Harry's ale and downed at least half of it in one gulp.

“Er, Malfoy?” Harry asked in concern.

“Something wrong Potter?” Draco asked with a smug smirk. He could clearly afford to buy his own drinks, but it amused him to be a pest. He'd probably generously offer to buy a round in a minute anyway.

Harry wasn't sure whether to say anything or not. He was about 90 percent certain that the poisons all flashed black, red, or some combination containing black or red, and so, this shouldn't kill the irritating git. Instead, he shook his head.

“Nope, nothing wrong at all. Alright there?”

“Just fine,” Draco stated with a shrug. “I've just come from a rather tedious business meeting and am looking to drink until I forget all about it.” After saying that, he sat down and made himself comfortable.

Harry raised a brow curiously. Normally he didn't go to the Leaky – or anywhere in public really – without at least one of his friends to chase off overeager fans, but tonight, Ron and Hermione had a special dinner planned, Neville was on a date with Hannah, Dean and Seamus were having a night in, and even Luna and Ginny were off doing other things. Thus...

“I suppose I wouldn't mind drinking with you, Malfoy.”

“It seems my luck is better than expected tonight,” Draco murmured pensively before downing the rest of his stolen drink and holding up a hand to signal a waitress to attend them. “I'd like a bottle of that Albariño that's ordered especially for me, and go ahead and put whatever Potter wants on my tab for the rest of the night.”

“Right away sir,” the Waitress promised before running off.

“That's surprisingly generous of you, Malfoy,” Harry remarked in surprise.

“I always want to give you whatever you want,” Draco said, and then immediately looked like he was wondering why he said that.

Harry snorted in disbelief. “RIIIGHT! That's why you're always trying to bully and annoy me.”

“I only do that to get you to pay attention to me,” Draco informed him before looking rather shocked. He then seemed like he was trying hard to take it back but couldn't.

With a bit of a shocked grin, Harry remembered that the white gold indicated Veritaserum. Then he frowned in puzzlement; why in the bloody hell would someone try to slip him Veritaserum and then run off before asking any questions. He looked around and spotted the man that had given him the spiked ale looking rather disappointed that his plan had been foiled. Upon noticing Harry's eyes on him, he slunk away and never came back.

“Hmm...” Harry murmured as he stroked his chin. “Say Malfoy, what made you decide to sit with me tonight – rather than on your own or with someone else?”

“I always want to be near you – _did you slip me something Potter_?!” Draco demanded angrily.

Harry shook his head, then flinched. “Well, not on purpose. You stole the drink in which someone was trying to slip ME something.”

Draco narrowed his eyes and inspected the empty mug he'd taken from Harry. “I should've known...”

“So... _why_ do you always want to be near me?” Harry asked rather shamelessly.

“Because I –” Draco slapped a hand over his mouth and practically leapt to his feet.

Harry grabbed him by the arm before he could run away. “You what?”

“I REALLY don't want to answer questions while under Veritaserum! Or at least I presume that it _must_ be Veritaserum since I can't seem to stop telling the truth!” Draco was sounding a bit frantic now. He leaned back a little as if trying to pull free from Harry's grasp, but not very strenuously.

“Come on, it can't be THAT bad, Malfoy. If you just want to be my friend, I can accept that. I think it might actually be time for us to put our differences aside and be friends.”

“NO I DON'T WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND! I WANT-!” Once again, Draco managed to slap a hand over his mouth and stop himself from blurting out shameful secrets. He turned away and gave another rather feeble attempt at escaping Harry's grasp.

Harry frowned. “I do feel a bit of an arse by making you answer questions under the influence of Veritaserum, but I feel like I'll regret not asking them for the rest of my life if I don't. I also notice that you aren't _really_ trying to get away. I well know that you could hex me within an inch of my life if you _really_ wanted to get away.”

“And risk hurting you...?” Draco asked in a near whisper.

“You once tried to cast the Cruciatus Curse on me,” Harry pointed out, then mentally smacked himself for bringing up the night he nearly murdered Draco.

Draco gave him a look of profound sadness. “I'm so sorry about that. I was desperate and felt like I was running out of options. Hurting you at that point in time could have helped my parents...”

“Sit down, Malfoy, and finish this conversation with me without attracting every eye in the pub,” Harry ordered as the Waitress arrived with their drinks. She set them down and didn't dare disobey the look Harry gave her that plainly stated he'd hex her if she didn't shove off and leave them alone. “I've already cast a bunch of privacy spells around us, so no one else should be able to hear a word we say,” he explained even as he cast detection spells to ensure their drinks were clean. They were.

“That's not the problem!” Draco protested as he sat down after all. Harry unconsciously kept a grip on his arm. “The _problem_ is that I don't want to tell YOU anything!”

“Why not?” Harry wondered.

“Because we're not friends and you hate me,” Draco pointed out. “WHY in the bloody hell would I want to give you all the ammunition I have so that you can use it all against me for the rest of my life?”

“I'm not the one to do things like that,” Harry stated, rolling his eyes. “I wouldn't ask if I didn't genuinely want to know these things. Didn't I JUST say that I think we should be friends?”

“I DON'T WANT TO BE FRIENDS! I WANT TO BLOODY MA–AH!!!” Draco had both hands over his mouth this time.

“Mah?” Harry asked in amusement.

Draco put real effort into pulling his arm free this time. “Let me go Potter, before I really do have to hex you!”

Harry was shocked to see that Draco looked not just panicked or frantic, but genuinely close to crying. He let go of Draco's arm and blew out a heavy sigh. “I'm sorry, Malfoy. I just... you bloody baffle me, you know? Even now that the war is over and I KNOW you're not trying to help a madman take over the world, I can't seem to get you out of my head.”

Rather than run off like he wanted to, Draco studied his sexy black dragon hide boots. “You think about me?”

“Yeah, and even though I'm not under the influence of Veritaserum, I hope you understand that I'm not lying,” Harry said before taking a swig of his Brewdog IPA. “I reckon I just spent so many years dwelling on you that I noticed that you didn't really want Voldemort to win the war, and once I realized that, I could see so clearly that you were trapped in a horrible situation. To this day, I'm obsessed with knowing whether you're doing better and wondering if you found happiness.”

“You ARE my happiness,” Draco muttered so quietly that he prayed that Harry didn't hear him.

“What?” Harry asked, not certain he heard that right.

Draco refused to look at Harry and let him see how vulnerable he was feeling, but also couldn't force himself to run away and give up a rare moment alone with the sodding savior of the wizarding world. “Knowing that you're happy makes me happy. Knowing that you saved me and my family from an evil fate makes me hope you can forgive me for being a stupid and selfish arsehole. Knowing that you're destined to marry your girlfriend and have a half dozen fat and happy babies makes me happy that you're getting the happiness you deserve even as it makes me so very sad...” He turned his head from looking at his boots to the side of the room opposite Harry. Then he grabbed his bottle of wine and drank straight from the bottle so that he'd hopefully get drunk and forget this whole day ever happened.

“WHY does that make you sad?” Harry asked in confusion.

Draco managed to delay answering long enough to drink a good quarter to third of the bottle – before Harry grew concerned and took the bottle away from him. “It makes me sad because as much as I want you happy, I want you happy with ME...”

“Wha...?” Harry had to turn this information over in his mind a bit before it made sense. “You... You want to BE with me?”

Draco pressed his lips together and tried to resist the potion urging him to blurt out the truth. He even closed his eyes so that the truth couldn't be read in them.

Harry pushed his chair back an inch or so to give them a bit of space, and then exhaled a heavy sigh. “Listen... I... I don't really know what to think about that. I'm NOT trying to be an arsehole or make you feel bad, I just... I don't know...” he gave up trying to explain with a shake of his head. “I don't think I should ask you any more questions. CLEARLY you really DO have a lot of ammunition that could be used against you, and I don't want to use – I don't want YOU to think I'm going to use it against you.” He ran a hand through his perpetually messy hair.

Draco couldn't help but be drawn to the action, watching said hair nearly crackle from magic as it resisted even an unconscious attempt to tame it. “I love how your hair always looks like you just fell out of bed.”

Harry felt his left eyebrow go up in surprise. “You do?” This didn't seem likely, coming from someone who always looked like his hair was just tended to by highly skilled professionals.

Draco nodded. “I always wondered what it would be like to have hair that did whatever it wanted and just not care how it looked.”

“I care!” Harry protested, and then grinned. “I just don't have any choice in the matter. I always wondered what it would be like to have hair that looked sleek and shiny and perfect.”

“It's a pain in the arse, if I'm honest. It takes a LOT of work to keep it just so,” Draco admitted in a murmured, feeling slightly better about the conversation now. He took his bottle of wine back and poured some in a glass like a civilized person.

Harry smiled at him before taking a sip of his IPA. Then he frowned. “You're wrong about something. I'm NOT actually dating anyone, nor am I likely to have any amount of kids in the near future.”

“Why not?” Draco asked curiously.

“I'm too bloody busy studying to become an Auror to shag,” Harry admitted in a grumble.

Draco felt inexplicably happy to hear that. “Been a long time then?”

Harry nodded, feeling that since Draco had been forced to admit to a few truths he really didn't want to, it was only fair to admit to a few of his own. “Yeah, over a year, and there never really was a lot to begin with.”

“It seems like you have time now...” Draco murmured suggestively.

Harry frowned at him. “Oh right, like I can just go up to someone and – Oh! You mean you... But, erm... You're under the influence. It would be wrong for me to take advantage of you in this state.”

Draco snorted in amusement. “I'm under the influence of a bloody TRUTH potion! It can't make me do anything I don't want to except for tell the truth!”

“That's true...” Harry whispered as he thought this over. “I'm... not adverse, but... I... I really think that we should both think this over before jumping into anything.”

Draco felt as if Harry had just ripped his heart from his chest and trampled it into the ground. That was a polite thanks but no thanks if he'd ever heard one. He suddenly felt the need to be alone so that he could react in peace, so he stood up.

“In that case, I should probably go home and sleep off this potion before I blurt out anything worse.”

“Like what?” Harry asked out of sheer reflexive curiosity.

“Like the fact that I'm arse over tits in love with you,” Draco stated before he realized what he was saying, and then gasped as it hit him. Ready to murder himself, he stepped away so that he'd have room to Apparate.

Once again, Harry grabbed Draco by the arm, except this time, he pulled him on to his lap and gently cupped the back of his neck so that he could look him in the eye. “You are?”

Draco closed his eyes and prayed that Merlin would either strike him with lightning or resurrect the Dark Lord to AK him on the spot. “Wasn't it fucking obvious?!”

“Maybe to a Slytherin, but I'm a Gryffindor, remember?” Harry reminded him before stealing a kiss while Draco's eyes were still closed.

Draco moaned in longing, not just accepting the kiss he wanted so badly, but escalating it as much as Harry would let him. A suddenly sense of queasiness alerted him to the fact that Harry had Apparated them somewhere. He opened his eyes and looked around for a moment before Harry lifted him up out of a chair and pressed him into the bed they were right next to.

Trying hard not to get his hopes up, Draco closed his eyes again and let Harry do whatever he wanted, which was surprisingly nothing more than kissing for the rest of the night. The passage of time and the alcohol eventually teamed up to put them to sleep, but it happened to be the best sleep Draco could ever remember having.

When he woke up in the morning, he was free from the alcohol AND the Veritaserum, wearing only his pants while Harry clutched him like a teddybear in his sleep. For a good two full minutes, Draco was happier than he'd ever been in his life, but then reality reinserted itself.

“He was just humoring me,” he told himself firmly. Why else would they do nothing but kiss? If Harry had seriously wanted to claim him, they'd have shagged until they passed out.

“No,” Harry murmured softly in his ear. “I was just trying to let you make such a big decision once you were _sober_ and had the ability to weigh your options through the filter you normally have to prevent you from blurting out the unvarnished truth.”

Draco was silent as he thought this over for a few long minutes. Eventually he sighed. “Look, you know everything now – everything related to my feelings for you anyway. It's not like I can make the things I said not true. So really, it's not ME that has to make any sort of decision. Either date me, or let me go home.”

“Does that mean shagging is off the table?” Harry asked in disappointment, but also, he was proud of himself for not taking advantage of a situation that Draco would clearly have regretted.

Draco seemed to read his mind a little. “I WOULD have shagged you last night, and the memory probably would have been my most cherished one for the rest of my life, but now that I'm sober... You're right. I have more self respect than being an easy one off just because I want you so badly.”

“See as much as that does make sense, I'm actually rather surprised that you want to DATE me,” Harry stated. “If you said that you want to have me in every way possible, at your beck and call day and night, but otherwise I should stay out of your way and leave you alone – THAT I would believe. Dating me... You DO know that I'm hopeless at relationships, right?”

Draco snorted in amusement. “My only relationship so far has been a girl I don't really like in that way, so it's not exactly like I'm an expert or anything. All I know is that – aside from some general experimenting in school – I NEED to be in a relationship before I do the things I want to do with you.”

Harry was inexplicably happy to hear that, but also, rather curious. “Why?”

“Because...” Draco shifted so that he was facing away from Harry, who promptly spooned up behind him. He sighed morosely, only able to admit the truth because he already had. “My heart already belongs to you. I don't want you to use it like a tool to control me. If you don't want to date me, please just tell me now and let me go home. I promise I'll never bother you again.”

“Draco...” Harry murmured softly, kissing the back of his neck. “I told you last night that I don't know what to think about ANY of this... I... All I can promise you is that I don't want to use you. I only have about 15 minutes each night when I get home before exhaustion overwhelms me and I pass out. And then on the weekends, I spend as much time with my friends and chosen family as possible. I don't know if I CAN date you... but... If you want to try it... If you want to take those 15 minutes I have each night and spend them kissing... If you want to hold me when I'm sleeping... I... I think I'd really like that...”

Draco turned around abruptly so that he was thoroughly tangled with Harry and holding him like a precious treasure. “You mean that?”

“I do...” Harry confirmed in a soft voice before kissing Draco.

Before Draco could do more than return the kiss and grope Harry's arse in appreciation, a blaring noise interrupted them.

“IT'S 8AM! IF YOU'RE NOT RUNNING OUT THE DOOR, YOU'RE LATE FOR CLASS!!!”

“Fuck!” Harry swore in frustration. “I really gotta go!” He cried out as he pulled free from Draco's arms and fell out of bed. Not even getting to his feet, he summoned his clothes and yanked them on. “I'm really sorry! I TOLD you that I didn't have much time!”

Draco couldn't help but laugh as Harry hit his head on the bed while trying to stand so he could pull up his trousers. “That's alright. I've suddenly realized that I have nothing better to do than lay in your bed, snoop through your belongings, and pretend my hand is you until you get home.”

Harry groaned in longing.

“IF YOU'RE LATE FOR CLASS, YOU'LL BE REQUIRED TO RUN AN EXTRA HUNDRED LAPS!” The Alarm Charm warned.

Harry gave Draco a swift kiss. “I'll see you when I get back?”

“You will,” Draco promised, running his hand through Harry's hair, grabbing a thick handful, and holding onto it as he gave Harry a kiss to remind him to hurry home if at all possible.

“IT'S GOING TO BE 100 LAPS AND 25 BURPEES!”

“Fuck!” Harry roared, pulling free and Apparating away with all due haste.

“Hmmm....” Draco hummed happily as he stretched out in Harry's bed. It may not be much, but Harry wanted to spend time with him. They'd more or less agreed to date! It may not be a marriage proposal, but Draco could wait. The important thing was that they were going to try and Draco would be DAMNED if he let anything tear them apart now!


End file.
